Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
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Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
Her address, “History of the Red Cross; Its Origin and Progress,” is all
comprehensive, showing research, scholarship, logic. Her “Address to the
President, Congress and People of the United States” on “The Red Cross—A
History of This Remarkable Movement in the Interest of Humanity” is as
overwhelmingly convincing, as to the necessity of adhesion by this
Government to the Treaty of Geneva, as was Webster’s historic reply to
Hayne, in advocacy of the perpetuity of the Union. Her address on “What
is the Significance of the Red Cross in its Relation to Philanthropy” is
hardly less meritorious. Her address at Saratoga on “International and
National Relief in War” is more than a literary gem; it is a compendium
of humanitarian history—of Red Cross philosophy. No similar humanitarian
address even approximates it, in wisdom and argument.
Through seven years, in the field of letters and politics, there raged a
war against woe, a war led by a Master Spirit. Humanity won—won through
that Master Spirit. That Master Literary Spirit, says another great
woman, has “won the hearts of the women of the world.” She not only
“walked like a benediction of her God amid the desolate, the stricken,
the hungry and despairing,” but she walked and talked and lived “in
pulses stirred to generosity.” Her pathos of sentiment and elegance of
diction won the hearts of the American people, won Congress, won the
President, won the Red Cross for America. And “the Red Cross in its
great and human principles, its far-reaching philanthropy, its
innovations upon long established and accepted customs and rules of
barbaric cruelty, its wise practical charity, stands forever next to the
immortal proclamation of freedom to the slaves that crowns the name of
Abraham Lincoln.”
[Illustration:
IDA M. TARBELL
Clara Barton got the preliminary experience which led to the
foundation of the Red Cross work, on the battlefields of the Civil
War. I have a high regard for her devotion, her organization
ability.—IDA M. TARBELL.
]
[Illustration:
LUCY LARCROM
Even a casual observer can not fail to see in Clara Barton’s work a
unity peculiar to itself—a work which has grown out of a character,
and which no one but herself could have done.—LUCY LARCROM.
]
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LITERARY WORLD
[Illustration:
ELBERT HUBBARD
Clara Barton has given us a constant lesson in thrift; a worker from
infancy, taking neither vacation nor recreation.
]
[Illustration:
ALICE HUBBARD
The greatest woman of all times. The people of the United States
admire, revere and devotedly love Clara Barton.
]
_The Fra_—Elbert and Alice Hubbard.
XXXVIII
Clara Barton’s dress was so simple that no one tried to follow her
fashion. ALICE HUBBARD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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